My Friend the Terrorist, A Tale of Love and Revolution

For the first 25 years of his adult life Jose Maria Sison was known to various degrees as the Fidel Castro, Mao Zedong, and Che Guevara of the Philippines. For the last 35 years of his life he has been living in exile, 10,000 km away from the bustle, the intrigue, the bribery and the squalor of Manila, in the tranquil medieval city of Utrecht, the Netherlands. In the 1960s Jose Maria Sison founded the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the CPP’s guerrilla-military arm, the New People’s Army (NPA), among other noble and nefarious activities that led to his Philippine passport being revoked in 1987. To the US State Department, the Philippine government, and some European authorities, Sison is a certified terrorist. With his wife Julieta de Lima (84) he lives a hand-to-mouth Spartan existence and yet they are the most charming couple. This is their love story: their love for each other, their love of country, and the love of many of their compatriots for them.